Fashion

GLOBAL INVESTOR 1.16 — 41
ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY
HAND-
SHAKE
OF HOPE
Sustainably produced fashion apparel is chic and hip today. Eco-fashion benefits
customers in stores and cotton farmers in the field. Small labels
and big retailers demonstrate that money can be made with eco-fashion.
BY RUTH HAFEN Freelance writer
T
here is hardly anything that we allow to come closer to
our bodies than cotton. It is the raw material for 40% to
50% of all textiles and the most used natural fiber. Compared
with synthetic fibers, cotton is very absorbent,
capable of absorbing up to 65% of its weight in water. Cotton fabrics
rate as being pleasant to the skin and hypoallergenic. As good as the
properties of cotton fibers are, it is problematic to produce them. The
biggest problem is water consumption. World Wildlife Fund International
(WWF) designates cotton a “thirsty crop” alongside rice,
sugar cane and wheat. The WWF calculates that it takes more than
20,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of cotton (which yields
something like one T-shirt and a pair of jeans). A remarkable amount
of insecticides and pesticides are also used to grow cotton. Although
cotton is cultivated on only around 2.4% of the world’s farmland, the
crop accounts for 24% of insecticide and 11% of pesticide usage
worldwide. This, in turn, pollutes groundwater, posing a hazard to
human health. For more on dyeing with air, saving gallons of water,
see p. 61
From Aral Sea to salt flat
The Aral Sea is a testament to exactly how thirsty cotton plants are.
Since the middle of the 20th century, water has been diverted from
rivers feeding into the Aral Sea in order to irrigate vast cotton plantations
in both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Since 1960, the Aral Sea
has lost some 85% of its surface area and more than 90% of its
volume. Once the world’s fourth-largest inland body of water, the Aral
Sea is now a salt flat. All that remains of Aralskoye More, as Russians
call it, are two outsized puddles. The desiccation of the Aral Sea